Smashing Stocks

[Bob Gerard]

Sometimes my temper gets the better of me when I start getting frustrated. I should have just stopped but the rabbit hole was getting too deep. Until it was just too far gone.
Has anyone else done something as bad as this?

[rich pierce]

I burned a TRS stock once.

[Mike Brooks]

Well, you gave us an idea of what poor grain structure in the wrist looks like!

[Bob Gerard]

Yeah, maybe it was good I screwed up at this point. Makes me dang mad at the hours wasted though.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Has anyone else done something as bad as this?

We are definitely related.

[Dave B]

Better now that on a hunt some where, slip, trip or fall and bust it then. Now you have the opourtunity to do a rod through the wrist repair that we all at some point in our building will have to under take. Kind of like death and Taxes. Its only a matter of time before it will happen. Sorry for the frustration. Some one told me Hershal House had a few busted stocks behind his gunshop from oopses that became firewood.

[Stoner creek]

No, but I sawed up a nice smooth rifle stock into 7 pieces of kindling one time.

[Mike Brooks]

Has anyone else done something as bad as this?

We are definitely related.

Hence the nice Kettenburg antiquing effect.....

[oldtravler61]

  Yep but not like that. I just stripped the parts off. Threw the stock in the corner and started a different plan.... I have a few stocks....lol

[Scota4570]

I band sawed a very nice Hawken stock into little pieces.  That was the second bad one from the same supplier.  I have another precarve stock around here someplace, I need to start a fire with it.  It was the first of two.  The second was closer but still a hot mess. 

I am skeptical of all precarve pantograph stocks now.    I'd rather start over than make a messed up gun. 

[mikeyfirelock]

I think you could still glue it………….ive done marvelous things with glue…..(as long as I didn’t run out of glue)

[Gaeckle]

Put it back together with some sheet brass, screws and nails do some heavy aging and you'll be a hit

[Bob Gerard]

It can’t be repaired- there were more pieces of stock around the shop floor.
What caused this was just stupid on my part;
I was inletting the lock but I hadn’t taken into account the wide mainspring which therefore ran contact with the barrel and that was that. Too high up in the front. It had needed to be angled downward in the front to clear. But by the time I realized that little detail the inletting was too far along. Stupid error. I was so mad at myself that I hit a Home Run with the stock against my work bench leg. Irish temper, they say.
The work bench is just fine, thankfully.
Lesson learned the hard way.

[Beaverman]

WOOOOOOSAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

[Jim Kibler]

WOOOOOOSAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

You do know that cutting the spring down and/or chiseling a notch in the barrel is perfectly acceptable?  You can gain quite a bit by doing this. 

[Bob Gerard]

Hi Jim/ yes I thought about that but it would have taken a lot of spring off, like a quarter inch worth.

[T.C.Albert]

Wasn’t Billy Corgan going to name his band “Smashing Stocks” originally ? 

[mountainman70]

Bob, my condolences to you and the others here.
Several years ago I did the same thing to a full stock hawken I was building.
Rear site bite a big hole in the palm of my hand and my Irish side rar'd up and I beat it to pieces. Then look the hatchet to it.
If I'd had a fireplace handy it would have been cinder.
I picked up the pieces and put in a box.
We took a trip back to Georgia and I thought it would be fun to see if I could put it all together again.
The shop I retired from was well equipped to do such work.
I did get it done and finished the build.
It certainly looks like it had a hard life but shoots great.
Gave it to my late brother to enjoy for a while.
Got it back when he passed now I can't make myself restock it.
I do get it out and shoot just to remember him.
I think I posted pics here of it before2014
Good luck with whatever you do. Best regards, Dave the smasher! 😄

[Eric Krewson]

I should have done that with my pre-carve from $#*! stock, instead I fixed at least a dozen major flaws with patching and finagling, it took me 6 months and I still have a gun with a dogleg ramrod channel and the cast off of the butt stock starting at the front of the lock molding. This messed up pre-carve will be the last pre-carve I ever buy unless it is from Kibler.

[Bob Gerard]

Though not a blank there wasn’t much pre- inletting done on this except for the ramrod channel and hole. The hold, I discovered, was drilled to less than about 1/8” from blowing out the bottom of the stock below the lock area. I was wondering how I was gonna handle that later on…
But I think this may have been my last hurrah anyway. Stocks are getting very expensive and I really don’t need another long gun, plus I don’t relish the idea of trying to sell it when it’s done.
Not rushing into any decisions now though.

[wpalongrifle]

USPS does this 8-10 times!
And they charge you.

[mountainman70]

USPS does this 8-10 times!
And they charge you.

Ain't it da Truff!!

[Habu]

I should have done that with my pre-carve from $#*! stock

There's another kind of pre-carve?  I spent last spring repairing cracks from the lock panel back into the wrist.  Every time I repaired one another would open up.  I finally wound up slotting the wrist and gluing in a splint . . . then making a new drill bit to re-drill the bottom of the ramrod hole, re-inletting lock guts, breech, trigger and guard. 

But just think of all the time I saved with a kit! 

[Gaeckle]

There's another kind of pre-carve? 
[/quote]

One can start a rather lengthy discussion on the inherent flaws and misconceptions and all sorts of evils that occur with a pre-carve stock

[Eric Kettenburg]

Assuming there's enough meat the breech, I prefer to chisel in a bit of relief rather than remove spring material.  I think the old dead guys did also, because I've quite a few antiques apart with various levels of relief chiseled/filed in there even when to my eye, the spring would have been perfectly functional with some material removed.  I suspect the philosophy was (at the time) that the spring may have been more prone to failure than the barrel.